It is known to produce elongated chips of wood, hereinafter referred to as strands, by comminuting round pieces of wood. For that purpose, an apparatus is provided which comprises a wood feeder and a longitudinal wood chipper which can have a blade ring chipping unit displacable in a direction transverse to the wood and across an end thereof at which the chipping is effected.
That apparatus has a chipping chamber which is provided at its lower region with a bottom structure and in its upper region with a cover segment. On one side of this chamber a chipping path is provided and on the opposite side a stationary support projects into the chipping chamber and provides a stop for the boards against which the boards are supported for the cutting action from the opposite side. The stack of boards can be advanced with successive cuts as the blade ring is displaced back and forth along its longitudinal guide transverse to the direction of advance of the stack.
Such chippers have been used to produce strands of a given length, width and thickness from round pieces of wood and the blade ring which extends through the chipping chamber and is displaced from the chipping path side toward the stop member is designed to thus comminute the pieces of wood. The chipping effectiveness of this apparatus which is designed to cut up round pieces of wood, is unsatisfactory when attempts are made to cut up boards or stacks of boards. Indeed, the packing density of the wood in the chipping chamber for a given volume is only about 50% while the packing density of a stack of boards is around 80 to 90% or more than 50% greater. The chipping power utilized with round pieces of wood is insufficient for such stacks and by and large the quality of the chipping operation is greatly limited when attempts are made to use stacks of boards in such an apparatus.